Welcome to Litsy!

If JARAN were 350 pages, I‘d have loved it. At 500, it was a bit too long to graduate from Really Liked It status. Sadness.

Still, Elliott delivers a fascinating universe seeded with conflicts both worldly and intergalactic. She creates a compelling group of characters who relate beautifully to one another. And she bucks tropes as often as she possibly can. I‘m most pleased with how Kirill defied my expectations, but there‘s a ton to admire here.

Caramel latte + book on this miserable afternoon. Summer rains are my jam. Autumn ones with snow mixed in, not so much.

I‘d love to finish JARAN tonight, but I think I‘m still over 100 pages from the end and I‘ve got other stuff to do. Sigh. It‘s good, but it‘s taken me way too long to finish it. My engagement‘s suffering.

I‘m gonna settle in with my book and some sake, provided I can tear myself away from CBC. Gotta keep abreast of the election results.

I‘m enjoying JARAN, but I‘m also stuck on it. Ebooks with long chapters often trip me up because I dislike stopping in the middle of a scene and don‘t always have enough time to finish the whole chapter in one session. I ended up taking a break from it over the weekend, but now I‘m gonna dive back in.

I stopped in at McDonald‘s for a free cappuccino and a chapter of JARAN. The book‘s great so far; immersive and well balanced between its wider science fictional setting and the pre-first-(official)-contact culture the protagonist finds herself in. I‘m excited to read on.

I won a muffin on Monopoly, too! Hurray!

This was one of those weird days when it was easiest to grab some poetry during my little scraps of reading time, but now I‘ve got the time and the headspace to sink into JARAN. I‘ve settled into my nook, ready to enjoy my lights while I read. (I put them up really early to brighten my spirits after the storm. Winter is hell for me and I‘m upset it started so early this year.)

I started QUARTZ by Rabia Gale last night, but it failed the three-chapter test. Sadness.

This morning I went back to my spicy egg roots while I dove into the last book on my October Must-Reads list: JARAN by Kate Elliott. I‘ve got a good feeling about it so far, which I‘d be happier to report if I hadn‘t had the same initial reaction to QUARTZ. Still, I‘ve read and enjoyed Elliott before, so fingers crossed.

This book (and series) has first class world building, with in depth politics, culture, and history, and a way of approaching certain troubling romantic tropes that makes the reader revaluate them, and then punch the sky in joy.

I rate this somewhere between Like and So-So. Sci fi, but with very few changes it could be an historical novel set on the Great Steppe in Russia. The two main characters are a bit cliched, but they did show growth, so I plan to read the sequel.